Microsoft has failed to honor its promise to offer users...
Microsoft has failed to honor its promise to offer users a Web browser choice screen, the European Commission said Wednesday in a statement of objections. Its preliminary view of the situation, which followed the launch of an antitrust investigation in…
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July, is that Microsoft failed to roll out the screen with its Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which was released in February 2011, the EC said. From then until July 2012, millions of Windows users in the EU may not have seen the choice screen, and the company has acknowledged that it wasn’t displayed during that period, the EC said. The screen was one of several commitments made by the software giant to the EC in December 2009 to address competition concerns related to the tying of Internet Explorer to Microsoft’s Windows. The company agreed to make the screen available until 2014, the EC said. Microsoft now has the right to respond to the statement of objections, the EC said, stressing that it hasn’t prejudged the final outcome of the probe. Microsoft said it takes the matter “very seriously” and moved quickly to address the problem as soon as it became aware of it. Although the glitch arose from a technical error, “we take responsibility for what happened, and we have taken steps to strengthen our internal procedures to help ensure something like this cannot happen again,” it said. It apologized for the mistake and promised to cooperate fully with the EC.